All is Good in the Glow of Moonlight A Review
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https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/all-is-good-in-the-glow-of-moonlight
Date Reviewed: 03/07/2025
I will admit it, I went in cold. No synopsis, programme notes, only a glance at the flyer they handed me when I walked in. So when I was greeted with soup, gherkins, bread, vodka, and Verdi’s La Traviata, all while being charmed by a Spanish-speaking gentleman, I thought I would stumble into a Roberto Bolaño novel of some kind.
This was All is Good in the Glow of Moonlight, a biographical play about Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel. An obscure literary figure whose work survived Soviet censorship thanks to devoted fans and readers, before being revived for republication in the 1960s and ’70s.
Onstage, Babel is acerbic, boastful, and compelling. He recalls knowing Gorky and reading Maupassant at ten. There is also an undercurrent of resentment; he laments his absence from the glorious spotlight Russians typically award their writers—Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov. There’s a restless and dignified intelligence in his presence, frustrated by posthumous recognition and the obscurity of exile. And yet, he’s immensely watchable: sardonic, self-aware, and oddly elegant.
The production leans confidently into Brechtian elements: cue cards, direct address, scattered sculpture, live music—all used to clever effect. The visual storytelling is expressive without being ornamental. The music, in particular, is essential. It’s moving and performed with great awareness of the effect it will have on the audience.
The theatre wasn’t full on the night I attended. The older audience of bemused locals were keen to sip a free glass of vodka but more hesitant about soup and bread. This is a play crying out for a younger, more awake and more engaged audience hungry for modern theatre and hot soup.
The play gently explores the idea of an author’s success postmortem. The implications of a life not fully lived until after death. As well as complex and profound themes: the strange fate of writers who live on after death, the costs of political compromise, the shockingly profound idea of an individual’s legacy.
There’s humour and sharp pacing. It’s the kind of excellent theatre that doesn’t feel like an hour of sitting and watching. It is effortlessly entertaining.
In the end, I can only offer a production like this five stars. All is Good in the Glow of Moonlight is not only superb theatre by Melbourne standards; it’s a deeply crafted, quietly ambitious piece that lingers in the mind. Go hungry. Come open. You’ll leave warmed and stirred.